


Sleepy Hollow AU

by al-the-remix (only_blue)



Category: Men's Hockey RPF
Genre: Alternate Universe - Historical, Alternate Universe - Sleepy Hollow, Doctor Evgeni Malkin, Gothic, Happy Ending, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Romance, Sharing a Bed, Supernatural Elements, headless horseman - Freeform, mild body horror
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-19
Updated: 2020-12-19
Packaged: 2021-03-11 01:21:36
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,324
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28176819
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/only_blue/pseuds/al-the-remix
Summary: “Something bad happened to me, didn’t it?”
Relationships: Sidney Crosby/Evgeni Malkin
Comments: 23
Kudos: 62





	Sleepy Hollow AU

**Author's Note:**

> So this was supposed to be a short au post two months ago...now it's 7k of almost fic? It's not the 30k that this idea deserves, but I hope you still enjoy it!
> 
> Also, the body horror really is mild and fleeting so don't be put off. 
> 
> Thank you to sevenfists for the beating and also for the phrase "gentleman companions"

The story begins with Zhenya moving to the outskirts of Westchester County in the mid-1800s. He’s sent straight out of school to a position in a town no one else is willing to take. Zhenya heard his peers talk of an old professor who used to live there and refused to go back. But the town needs a doctor, as it’s plagued by many illnesses and located too far away from any of the formal hospitals being established in New York.

The town is small and barren; most of the people keep to themselves, wary of outsiders and foreigners. When Zhenya arrives it feels like he’s entering another world. The road is dusty, the trees creak in the wind, there’s hardly anyone in sight. Zhenya’s new house is as sullen as everything else in the town and secluded from the knot of smaller houses and shops that make it up. Zhenya really does try his best to spruce the place up. He hires house staff, just a cook, a housekeeper, and a valet. He’s only one person, after all. He doesn’t need much help. Between the three of them, they dust the mirrors and the furniture, and light fires in all of the fireplaces to try and draw the chill from the bones of the house. Zhenya takes it upon himself to venture into the field behind the house and picks wildflowers. He peppers them throughout every room and feels satisfied that the house is finally starting to feel like a home.

Over his first few months living there, Zhenya witnesses the rash of illness that he heard talk of at school. Zhenya treats many of the townsfolk for sickness of one sort or another. He’s startled by the number of people he’s seeing and worries it might have to do with something in the water or the soil, but there doesn’t seem to be a steady correlation between symptoms. It’s like the town has been plagued with a bad omen--not that Zhenya believes in those.

It’s not all bad; he delivers a few babies and even some kittens one of the farmer’s children asks him to come look at. He’s still lonely though. He writes long letters back to his family in Russia, disheartened to find that the people around him are still wary of him. He goes into town and sits in the pub at least once a week to be seen, hoping that repeated exposure will convince the town’s folk he’s pretty normal and pretty boring. Zhenya orders soup and pretends to read while he eavesdrops on as many conversations as he can, hoping to find a moment to slide easily into one of them.

Zhenya does get an invitation from the town magistrate to dinner. Zhenya has yet to see the man; he never leaves his home, which is the only one in town larger than Zhenya’s, though it is in significantly better shape and perched atop a hill, the highest point in the town. The magistrate and his family are nice enough; they ask him about his family and where he grew up and who he studied under. They praise his English, but like everyone else, they don’t seem like they quite know what to do with him. What box to place him inside.

So Zhenya keeps up his routine, spending his nights at home in front of a fire with a good book, takes house calls during the day, and tries to visit the pub for a meal or a drink as often as he can. It’s during one of those meals one evening when the sun is about to set and Zhenya is getting ready to call it a day when a man comes bursting through the doors of the pub, ghostly pale and hollering like a banshee. “I’ve seen him, I’ve seen him!” the man screams.

Alarmed, everyone around him drops what they were doing and gasps. One of the barmaids helps the man to a chair, which he collapses into as if his strings have been cut, pale and shaking. Another patron hisses that she shouldn’t be touching him, but the barmaid just shushes him and gets the man a drink. His interest piqued, Zhenya sits back down and listens.

There are harsh whispers he can’t quite make out as the townspeople bicker amongst themselves. A man who is clearly familiar with the one who had been screaming gently tells him to go home.

Having heard enough, Zhenya stands and straightens himself out. He’s got one shot to make a good impression of authority here. This is his moment. “Sorry, I couldn’t help but overhear, is there something I can help you with? I am the new doctor, you see.”

The man just shakes his head and blots his face with his pocket square. His hands are shaking and there’s a mist of sweat on his hairless upper lip that he’s missed. Up close, Zhenya can tell that he’s young. “I know, but there’s nothing to be done. I saw _him,_ sir, I'm gone for.”

Zhenya’s brow furrows. “Saw _whom?_ ”

The people around him grow quiet, eyes shifting from one to another, and no one speaks. Finally, the barmaid explains. The man saw the Headless Horseman, an omen of death, a ghostly being that has been haunting the town for nearly a decade. Over the years, Zhenya has heard his fair share of folk stories--most towns have one or two fables of their own--but he’s never heard of a spirit causing _illness._ Surely the man heard something in the woods that frightened him and was now sending himself into hysterics.

“How can you know for sure that the Horseman is the cause of the illness?” Zhenya asks, trying to understand.

The room falls silent around him once again and the man slowly undoes the buttons of his yellowed shirt. There, over his bony chest, lies a black mark like an upside-down horseshoe.

“The plague?” Zhenya wonders aloud.

“No sir, the black mark won’t spread, but he’ll be in a coma within a week.”

With nothing else to be done, Zhenya and the man’s friend help him home to his family. By the time they arrive, the man looks waxy and he’s sweated through his shirt onto Zhenya’s. His wife looks as pale as he when the man’s friend explains to her what her husband saw. Before he leaves, Zhenya gives her a tonic from his physician’s bag. She thanks him but the gesture does nothing to lift her spirits.

That night, Zhenya begins to have waking dreams the same way he did as a child. Again and again, he wakes to realize he’s been sleepwalking, each night drawn farther and farther away from his bed. It’s something about the field behind his home that takes him from his bed each night. He wakes ankle-deep in cold mud in his bed clothes surrounded by grey grass and swirling fog. There’s something out there in the sea of dead grass that’s drawing him from his sleep like a lodestone to iron.

One of these nights when Zhenya is taken from his bed, instead of stumbling home when he wakes in the field, he keeps going. Picking his way slowly with only the pale early morning light to guide him, he walks until he comes to the base of the lone, leafless tree. The tree’s bark is black as if scorched and its arms are twisted with age. Compelled by some unknown urge, Zhenya kneels at its base and digs around the roots until his nails are thick with wet dirt and bumping up against some dull curve.

Carefully scooping the dirt from around the object, Zhenya pulls from the roots a skull. He stares at it in his hands for a long time. It’s mostly intact and Zhenya places it aside and digs some more but all he can find is the mandible. There are no other bones, no gravestone, no clothes or personal artifacts. He cradles the skull to his chest and trundles home covered in mud and shivering.

There’s a fire waiting for him when he gets back to his room which means his house staff will have noticed his absence and is no doubt looking for him. He’s not sure what compels him to, but he hides the skull away and rings for a bath. His valet fusses over him, and after he’s washed and dressed he disappears into his study and locks the door behind him.

Zhenya takes his time cleaning the skull and jaw of debris and bugs until it is pearly white and new-looking—as new as a skull can be—then he takes out his ledger. The skull is male and belonging to an adult. He spends the rest of the day studying it, jotting down notes and drawing it from every angle. He asks for lunch to be brought up to his study and places the skull and its jaw together on the mantle and admires it. He’s a doctor, after all, it’s good to have a skull. Though he promises to himself and to the unknown man that Zhenya will figure out who he is and give him a proper burial. Surely whoever he is he deserves better than to be forgotten under the roots of some dead tree.

Zhenya spends the next few days asking around the town about the old owners of the house. People seem wary of answering his questions, but then again they seem wary about almost everything. Still, Zhenya gets the sense something bad happened here.

It’s early in the morning when he gets called to the house of the man from the pub who had seen the Horseman. Zhenya doesn’t know what he’s expecting exactly, but it’s a shock to find him lying in the family’s one bed, unmoving. He’s alive but unconscious, in a coma just like he said he’d be. The black mark on his chest is still there, greenish around the edges like an old bruise, but it hasn’t spread. The wife is weeping silently beside him and Zhenya offers to bring her a cot to place him in but other than that there is nothing he can do; eventually the man will die.

With a heavy heart, Zhenya ventures to the pub. It’s too early for a doctor to be seen drinking in public, but right now he doesn’t care. He sits at the bar, his mind spinning with what that family is supposed to do without their husband and father. Zhenya has failed at his job. Maybe if he had taken the curse more seriously from the beginning he would have been able to find some kind of cure.

“I heard the news.”

Zhenya lifts his head from his arms to find the barkeep hovering. He looks uncertain and Zhenya tries his best to look friendly and approachable, but he doubts it’s working in his current condition. Despite that, the barkeep leans against the counter like he might actually stay and talk to Zhenya for a bit.

“It’s awful what’s happened to all those people,” he says, and Zhenya nods. A real ghost sickness: who’d have thought.

“How many have died?” he asks, because if there’s been a recent death, examining the body before severe decomposition sets in might give him some insight, but the barkeep just shakes his head.

“No one’s dead, they all just sleep.”

Zhenya frowns, straightening in his seat. That doesn’t seem possible; without food or water or movement there is no way for the body to survive more than a few days. “That can’t be possible,” Zhenya mutters but the barkeep just shugs.

“I can give you a list of families, but I warn you, many aren’t fond of visitors, especially outsiders. Not after what’s happened to them.”

Zhenya nods, and thanks him for his help. He looks like he’s about to move on to someone else when Zhenya speaks up again. “The house I live in, I was wondering if you could tell me who lived there before? I’ve asked but no one will give me a straight answer.”

The barkeep eyes him before speaking. “It’s a bad story, sir, that house has a long history of sorrow.”

“I’d like to know, if you don’t mind.”

He explains to Zhenya that before the manor was built, a small farmhouse stood in its place. An Irish family lived there, isolated from the rest of the town and distrusted and treated as outcasts. Zhenya can feel the slow grip of dread in his stomach as the barkeep tells him of the fire that had killed the wife and child but not the husband.

“Many think it was arson,” the barkeep concludes.

“By the husband or...”

“That’s the question, isn’t it?” He leans in. “The husband said it was murder, the townspeople said he lit it himself.”

“So what happened to him?”

“They hung him.” Zhenya’s stomach sinks. “That was ten years ago. People are better now, sort of.” The barkeep grimaces. “People have tried to live in that house but every few years it catches fire again. You should watch yourself.”

By the time Zhenya leaves the pub the sun has begun to set—if it was ever out to begin with. Zhenya feels as if he’s seeing less and less of it every day. When he wakes up the sky is gray and when he goes to bed it’s the same somber colour. He has his list of families to visit tucked inside his breast pocket; there are at least seven names on the paper. He’ll start with the first one tomorrow, but now he needs sleep and to feel warm again. His heart is heavy and there’s a knot in his stomach that seems impossible to untie.

The sky grows darker as he gets closer to home. Fog rolls in and in the distance Zhenya can see the crack of lightning where there shouldn’t be any, low between the trees. He slows in his tracks. No birds, no crickets chirp as the forest goes silent. There are a few drawn-out moments of silence before it's broken by the pounding of hooves, and suddenly a hulking black shape emerges from the fog. A noise rips through the air, unlike any beast he’s heard before, so loud it shakes the trees.

Zhenya stumbles back and trips over a root, his physician’s bag splitting open and spilling its contents. All he can do is stare, frozen, at the empty air where the Horseman’s head should rest on its shoulders.

The shadow of horse and rider looms over him as they come to a halt at his feet. The jangle of metal spurs echoes through the trees as the rider dismounts and Zhenya is sure this is the end. The Horseman points the sword at his chest, the razor-sharp tip a whisker away from grazing his skin before the Horseman's arm gets jerked back quickly as if he were a puppet with its strings snagged.

Zhenya sits on the dirt road in a fear-drunk stupor as the rider gets back on his horse and charges back the way he came.

Zhenya runs the rest of the way home. He takes the stairs two at a time and locks himself inside his study. Tearing off his shirt, Zhenya checks his skin for black marks, though he finds none. He presses his hands to his desk and tries to catch his breath. His pulse is racing but other than that he feels fine. He doesn’t know why the Horseman spared him. But he has an idea.

One the mantle, the skull sits innocently. Even from across the room, Zhenya can tell something is different; his eye catches on the glimmer of firelight on wet skin. Buttoning his shirt back up, Zhenya goes to investigate. There’s a residue covering the skull, the bone shines with it, and when Zhenya holds it up to examine further, it sticks to his fingers. Under closer inspection, he finds where the jaw bone has begun to knit itself back to the skull. For a moment, Zhenya believes he’s seeing things. Maybe the Horseman had spared him from ghost sickness, but had given him ghost madness instead. He finds a better place for the skull to rest so it can repair itself undisturbed.

Slowly, day by day, Zhenya notices changes with the skull. The only thing to do at this point is to accept what’s in front of him. Curious rather than horrified, Zhenya keeps track of those changes. At first, it’s very minimal, nerves snaking across the skull, then come the layers of muscle, fat pads, and veins, then finally the skin. Zhenya tends to it meticulously. He makes sure the jaw sets properly, that the fresh layers of skin are clean of dust and debris, that the head has somewhere comfortable to lie. It hasn’t opened its eyes yet, and Zhenya’s not sure it ever will, but he feels responsible for it. He’s barely able to believe what’s in front of his eyes, but if there’s a headless man then a magic skull can’t be too far beyond the realm of possibilities.

During the day, he goes to visit the people from the list. Some families need more convincing than others to let him in. Like the barkeep said, they all have the same black mark and they are all, miraculously, still alive. Zhenya stops asking questions about his house and the family who lived on that land many years ago. He feels protective of the head and the man and his family. He sits with the head at night and reads to it in front of the fire. The man’s hair is finally coming in, a soft black fuzz over his skull like a baby’s. Zhenya touches it gently while he reads and sometimes he even swears he can see the eyes move and flick under their eyelids.

The day he wakes it rains as if it may never rain again. Zhenya comes home soaked to the skin. He had been checking on the families of the Horseman’s victims again; they welcome him into their homes now. When people see him they smile. If he goes to the pub there’s always someone willing to talk to him. He finally feels like he has a place here.

He ditches his drenched jacket and boots and asks for his dinner to be brought upstairs, again. He stands in front of the fire in his study and pulls his soaking shirt over his head when a scratchy voice comes from the corner.

“You’re the one who’s been reading to me?”

Its eyes-- _his_ eyes are open, watching him. Zhenya stares back. He didn’t know what kind of eyes he expected when he looked into the hollow depth of the skull’s eye sockets, but these are big and warm and watching him expectantly. Zhenya swallows.

“That’s me.”

“I recognize your voice,” the head says, and Zhenya’s heart does a funny thing in his chest.

He walks over to where the head is resting, cautiously, and kneels in front of him so they’re at eye level, suddenly feeling exposed without his shirt on.

Zhenya talks with the head late into the night. The man is pleasant, fond, and kind. There’s a familiarity there.

His name is Sidney. “But you can call me Sid,” he says, and it’s funny that the person who’s warmed to him the fastest in this town is hardly a person at all. _Maybe an eighth of one_ , Zhenya reasons. He seems like a person, and his personality makes it easy for Zhenya to forget that he’s missing a body.

Sid--his head that is--seems to have the pleasant memories, compared to his body which is still wreaking havoc. It must only feel the pain and hurt and the sadness of the soul, Zhenya thinks. It doesn’t surprise him; with such a clear division between the heart and mind, the only possible outcome could be chaos.

He’s not sure just how aware Sid is of his body--or lack of body. They have deep conversations. His voice is smooth, with an Irish accent. Zhenya isn’t surprised by this. Sid’s memories are foggy; things come to him slowly. He’s happy to talk about ships and farming and is intrigued by Zhenya’s work, but is surprised to learn where he is.

“We’re not in Ireland?” Sid asks There’s a knot between his brows which Zhenya hates. He wants only good things for Sid, but he can’t protect him from his own memories.

Sometimes at night, Zhenya takes Sid with him to his bed. He rests Sid’s head against the pillows comfortably and pulls the covers up to his neck so that it’s like he was really lying there beside him, whole, except it’s not like that at all. The townspeople have warmed to him but it’s been so long since Zhenya had a true friend. Zhenya tells Sid about the Horseman and the plague and the work he’s been doing trying to find a cure. Sid listens and that crease between his brow grows ever more stormy and Zhenya wonders if Sid were really here now--all of him--with everything that happened in the past and everything in the present, if he had legs and lungs and his heart, if he would stay. If he wouldn’t leave the safety of Zhenya’s covers. Zhenya would like to think that he would still be here, but he can admit that his mind has been coloured by time and seclusion.

“Something bad happened to me, didn’t it?” Sid asks one night, his eyes far off. Zhenya would touch his hand if he had any. Instead, he rests his hand lightly against the side of Sid’s skull in what he hopes is a gesture of comfort. Sid doesn’t shake him off or tell him to stop, so he pushes it and brushes his thumb against the arch of Sid’s cheek when he reminds him, kindly: “You’re just a head, Sid.”

“Right,” Sid says, his voice thick and eyes bright. Zhenya is still mystified every day how he can talk or cry or laugh without his body. But Zhenya can’t do anything but accept what’s right in front of his eyes. Zhenya pulls Sid in a little closer across the sheets, as he would a friend or a sibling, till he can feel the flick of Sid’s eyelashes against his skin and the dampness of his breath. Zhenya tells himself it’s just about comfort.

“This okay?” he asks, his voice gentle.

“Yeah,” Sid says, voice soft in return. He doesn’t smell like death. He smells like grass, a little earthy and a little new. Zhenya touches his nose lightly to Sid’s curls just to double-check and feels Sid inhale sharply.

Zhenya’s hand comes up to settle him automatically and just hovers there in an awkward pet. “That’s nice,” Sid mumbles, and so Zhenya continues to stroke him without hesitation, petting the disembodied head tucked against his chest.

His house staff worry about him spending so much time locked away in his study alone and talking to himself. Zhenya insists that he’s just busy trying to find a cure to the Horseman’s curse--which he is--but he also alots time every night to read to Sid the way he did while Sid was still unconscious. At first, he feels a little abashed reading Sid his romance novels, it had been different when he wasn’t sure if Sid was really listening or not. Now the words feel clumsy in his mouth as he feels the soft whistle of Sid breath against his hand.

One day Zhenya takes a trip to the town notary in search of any information that might give him insight into what happened to Sid and his family. Even though Zhenya has stopped asking questions, he still keeps his ears piqued for any rumours surrounding the Horseman, though he’s found none. The notary is the least helpful he could possibly be, but Zhenya has charm on his side and enough semblance of authority to get what he wants.

He’s not allowed to bring the documents back home with him, but he takes as many notes as he can and when he gets home he reads them to Sid. He has him propped up on his desk instead of tucked against his side in front of the fire, not sure if the touching would be welcomed right now.

Sid’s eyes are glassy as he stares into mid-distance. “I remember now,” Sid says, and Zhenya wishes he knew what was going on inside his head, if only to help share the burden of his memories.

“Okay?” he asks. It was a silly question: of course he wasn’t okay, but what else was there to say? In all of Zhenya’s bedside training, nothing could have prepared him for a situation such as this. He knots his fingers together against the wood of his desk in an attempt to stop himself from reaching out and smoothing the wrinkle between Sid’s brows.

“No,” Sid answers eventually. “But I can feel now that it happened a very long time ago.”

Ten years doesn’t seem very long at all to Zhenya. But to Sid who woke up without the knowledge that time had passed at all, ten years feels like a lifetime of moments lost.

They hold a proper memorial for Sid’s family, late at night. Zhenya empties out his physician’s bag and places Sid inside, swaddled in a blanket so he doesn’t bump around. There’s a town cemetery on a hillside, by the edge of the forest. Zhenya tied two sticks together into a rough semblance of a cross. It’s pretty shabby, but it’s the meaning behind the gesture that counts. They find a quiet corner where hopefully the cross will be left undisturbed. Zhenya sticks it into the ground and says a few words from his prayer book, then pretends to be caught up in the grain of the grass under his boot while Sid murmurs a few private things.

“We’ve got to stop me, don’t we?” Sid says as Zhenya is putting him back into the bag. It’s the first time he’s really acknowledged his connection to the Horseman in that way.

“Yes,” Zhenya says.

“If you have to kill me, I want you to do it,” Sid concludes. He sounds so sure that that’s what this will come to.

Zhenya thinks that there has to be more to all this than _just_ death. But he doesn’t say that; instead he presses his lips into a thin line and pretends not to hear as he walks them back home.

Zhenya has a feeling Sid’s body isn’t choosing people at random. Zhenya leaves Sid by the window for the day while he goes to visit the magistrate at his home, hoping that maybe he’s the person that will tell him who was involved in the death of Sid’s family. It’s as good a place as any to start.

His hope doesn’t last long. “I’m sorry but there are just no records of that. My predecessor, the magistrate at the time, concluded that the husband was at fault and he was hanged. No other investigations were made.”

Zhenya lets his nails bite into the skin of his palms so he doesn’t say something rash.

“The man would have been poor. The crops were bad that year, maybe he thought it would be better to die than let them starve,” the magistrave explains, not unkindly. “If it _was_ arson, murder by some outside force, good luck finding out who. People take those kinds of secrets to their grave around here. Besides, some have moved, some have probably died, some might still be here but we’ll never know for sure. Just think, that farmer’s little girl, she’s in a coma, that family wasn't in this town ten years ago.”

He rests his fingers into a neat steeple in front of his nose as he comes to his point. “I don’t know why you’re asking about this, Doctor Malkin.”

Zhenya slumps in his seat. That had been his only lead. “It’s the Horseman--” he begins when an insistent banging on the door interrupts them. Zhenya stands, his stomach sinking when a pale-faced footman comes bursting through the door into the magistrate’s office.

“They’ve found him! They’ve found the Horseman’s head!” He looks over to Zhenya as if it’s the first time he’s really registering his presence in the room and his eyes turn into dish saucers. Zhenya’s stomach sinks further. “And he was in _his_ house!” He points a finger at Zhenya and Zhenya knows he’s doomed.

Everyone ends up together in the town hall. Sid’s in a birdcage, and Zhenya isn’t in shackles yet but he feels a second away from getting locked in a cell for the rest of his life--that’s if they don’t hang him first. The room is filled with chaos; everyone is yelling. Nobody seems to know what to do with this new information or how to solve their problem and no one will listen to him when Zhenya tries to explain the situation. Zhenya’s housekeeper is standing in the corner looking partly shocked and partly guilty as she stares between Zhenya, flanked by the barkeep and some farmer, and Sid in his cage. Zhenya is upset with her but he also can’t blame her. This is his fault; he should have been more careful. He tries his best to remember if he locked the door to his study or not.

He grits his teeth hard enough they might break. All these people are doing is wasting time. He doesn’t know yet how to stop the Horseman but he can’t solve the problem like this, and it’s clear to him now that no one else is capable.

Slowly, Zhenya’s ears pick up on a low rumble in the distance, and his heart drops to the pit of his stomach.

“Shut up, everyone shut up! _Listen_ \--”

Everyone freezes. Zhenya can physically see the colour drain from their faces as one by one they recognize the sound of the Horseman’s storm rolling in. Lightning cracks overhead and the window glass begins to tremble in its panes. The forlorn roar of the Horseman’s steed comes from right outside the door before it bursts open.

Papers fly everywhere and people cower to the floor. Zhenya looks to the barkeep who’s guarding him. “If you want to live, give me the key.”

The man looks conflicted for a moment before he walks over to where the magistrate is curled up on the floor in the fetal position and takes it from him easily, tossing it to Zhenya.

“This better work, or it’s my head on the block along with yours.”

Zhenya unlocks Sid from the cage, taking him out and holding him up against the storm inside the hall. Sid’s throat vibrates against Zhenya’s fingers as he yells out, trying to convince his body to take him back.

The rider dismounts once more and Zhenya musters up all of his bravery to plant his heels and stand his ground as the Horseman approaches. Sid saved Zhenya from his wrath once; he’s sure that was what happened that time in the woods.

“I’m so sorry,” Sid says, and his body stalls. There’s a long pause where Zhenya is sure it’s not enough but then the Horseman drops to his knee in front of them.

With unsteady hands, Zhenya lowers Sid onto his shoulders. He should be used to miracles by now, but Zhenya still stares in wonder as Sid’s neck knits back together. Slowly he lets his grip slacken till his palms are cupping Sid’s cheeks. Zhenya’s breath catches as Sid stands, and he steadies him with a hand to shoulder when he stumbles. In moments of self-indulgent contemplation Zhenya had wondered how tall Sid would be, the breadth of him. The top of Sid’s head barely comes to his nose and it makes Zhenya feel like he could still tuck Sid under his arm the way he did before.

Once Sid takes over the body he goes from house to house, removing the curse marks from everyone. One by one they wake and Sidney and the townspeople reconcile. They may never know the truth about what happened to Sid’s family, but he gets a new chance at life and so do the townspeople. Any further revenge would just make things worse.

(Because this is my story they live together in Zhenya’s house as gentleman companions and no one bothers them, the town owes them at least that much.)

With nowhere else to go, Sid goes home with Zhenya. Zhenya believes that surely now that Sid has his body back he’ll want to leave this place, travel and explore or go back to Ireland. He doesn’t count on Sid following him up the stairs to his study.

“I had the housekeeper make a bed for you, she says she’s very sorry.”

“She was scared.” Sid looks around, hesitant. “Do you want me to sleep in the guestroom?”

“Maybe it’s for the best. I want you to be comfortable,” Zhenya says, because that’s really all he's ever wanted since he found Sid’s skull in the dirt under tree roots. Comfortable and at peace.

“Okay,” Sid says softly. “Goodnight.” He takes the candle off Zhenya’s desk with a small smile and closes the door between them. Zhenya lets all his breath out in one big whoosh, slumping in his chair. He’d be lying if he didn’t say a part of him had wished, hoped even, that Sid would want to stay, sleep the way they had for months now. Zhenya has gotten used to Sid’s presence in Zhenya’s bed. Even without a body, Sid filled up the empty spaces.

He undresses and gets into bed. A lot has happened and he’s exhausted; he can’t even begin to imagine what Sid must feel like having a body again for the first time in decades. It isn’t hard to close his eyes and fall into a shallow sleep. He dreams of warm skin and warm eyes and hands that can hold him back.

Zhenya wakes to the sound of creaking hinges and startles, worried for a moment that he’s sleepwalking again, but no, he’s still in bed and there’s a shadowy shape moving across the room and into his bed. The fire outlines Sid in a soft orange glow.

“You said you wanted me to be comfortable,” Sid states, almost defensively, as he settles down beside Zhenya.

Zhenya just hums from his place tucked between the sheets while Sid burrows further underneath them.

“I couldn't sleep,” Sid admits quietly. “My limbs are all restless. I forgot what it’s like to never be able to find a good position to sleep in.”

Zhenya laughs lowly and Sid joins him. It sounds different, breathier with his trachea reattached to his lungs, reverberating through his chest in a new way. Zhenya aches to press his hand there, over Sid’s breastbone. So he tucks his fingers beneath his pillow instead.

“Sleep, Sid,” he says. Things feel better like this. Right. The lumpy shape of Sid’s body under the covers beside him, the warmth he radiates. Zhenya is almost back to sleep when Sid speaks again.

“Could you--” He lets his words trail off and Zhenya has to open his eyes to check if he’s even still awake.

He is. Zhenya can barely make out his face in the fuzzy darkness. “What is it Sid?”

“Could you touch my hair, like you did before?”

Zhenya hums and reaches a hand out. In the dark, his fingers bumping up first against the smooth curve of a shoulder, thick with muscle, he traces it to the root of Sid’s neck, over the shell of his ear and up to burrow into his hair. Sid lets out a sigh and settles.

“I was worried you wouldn’t want to anymore.”

“Not want to what?”

Instead of answering, Sid just shrugs.

In a moment of boldness, Zhenya gets what he's wanted to say all out at once. "I don’t want you to go.”

He feels Sid shift closer across the mattress. Sid’s regarding him keenly now. “Where would I even go?”

"Back to Ireland." It seems like the obvious answer.

Sid pinches his eyes shut like he can hold them back with his force of will. “Bad memories.”

“There are bad memories _here._ ” He doesn’t know why he’s pushing. But he has to be _sure._

“It’s not the same. This is still my home--you’re--home is here with you.”

Zhenya sucks in a sharp breath. Sid’s knees bump up against Zhenya’s under the covers. He’s close enough now that his breath sails across the sensitive skin of Zhenya’s neck. Zhenya can feel Sid’s body through the thin linen of Sid's sleep shirt, bulky and warm. Zhenya’s own heartbeat is thick in his ears. He can’t see much, so it’s a surprise when Sid’s nose nudges inquiringly against his. His lips ghost over the top of Zhenya’s cupid’s bow and Zhenya has to force himself to lie still as finally Sid’s nose settles into the groove of his cheek and Zhenya is rewarded with the tentative press of Sid’s mouth.

The sensation is like a glancing blow to Zhenya’s heart. He doesn't dare move in case he betrays his own feelings before Sid makes up his mind. Sid doesn’t owe Zhenya anything. Zhenya wants Sid to kiss him because there is nothing else he’d rather do in this moment or the next. If he kisses Sid back and Sid doesn’t feel the same--Zhenya doesn’t know what he’d do.

But then Sid lets out a small sigh and parts his lips just enough so that Zhenya is treated to the hot inside of his mouth. With a hand to the curve of Sid’s skull, Zhenya tilts his head so that he can place a few more slow, deliberate kisses to Sid’s flushed mouth before he pulls away to investigate the rounded corner of Sid’s jaw down to the silky skin behind his ear. He tells himself he’s going to stop, just one more kiss and then they’ll go to bed and talk about this in the morning. Surely that’s the right thing to do in this situation. But then Zhenya touches his lips to the arch of Sid’s neck, right where his skin had knitted itself back together, and Sid makes a _sound_ , a moan tugged up from the deepest part of his gut. And Zhenya can feel it, actually feel Sid’s cock, hot and soft pressed up against Zhenya’s thigh.

Zhenya takes his mouth from Sid’s neck, even though that’s really the last thing he wants to do. “Sid, I don’t know.” He doesn’t want to rush into anything and have Sid regret it later. Right now his feelings are tucked safely away behind a curtain, but if they go any further he doesn’t know if he can stop them from leaping forth.

“I want to feel good,” Sid says, and drags himself in a slow deliberate circle against the juncture of Zhenya’s hip. “Please.”

And then Zhenya is capturing Sid’s lips again and it isn’t like before, this time it’s maddeningly tender as Sid presses gentle kisses to his face. He’s hard now. Zhenya can feel it. Sid is aroused and so is Zhenya, and it feels so good he just wants to--

Zhenya doesn’t realize Sid is shifting them until he’s already done it. He’s on top of Zhenya now, his thick thighs spread across Zhenya’s hips. Warm firelight clings to his edges and Zhenya thinks of the outline of the Horseman bowing over him in the forest and how that wasn’t at all the same. Here he can snake his hand underneath Sid’s shirt and run his thumb over the smooth taut skin of his stomach.

He tries not to push too much but everything just feels so good. Better than Zhenya could have thought possible. Sid curves his body over him and Zhenya can feel the warm weight of his cock through the thin fabric of his shirt. His kisses are wet and insistent, his grip rough to match the way Zhenya digs his fingers into the muscle of Sid’s thighs. He eases up, snaking one hand between their bodies to ruck up his sleep shirt and wrap his hand around both of their dicks.

“Oh, please,” Sid says again as he rocks into Zhenya’s fist, making small insistent noises in Zhenya’s ear. He’s slick where their cocks are rubbing together, easing the friction.

“Don’t stop,” and “ _Zhenya_ ,” he says, like Zhenya might actually be thinking about it. Never, not when Sid’s knees are clamping down around his hips and it won’t take much at all to push him over. No one's touched him like this in a very long time, Zhenya can tell by the way Sid chases his grip. Sid gasps and twitches and makes a slippery mess all over Zhenya’s palm when he comes. His face is red and all scrunched up as if Zhenya's fist is the best thing he could imagine. 

"Good job," Zhenya whispers. He drags his other hand over the arch of Sid’s sweaty back and pulls him down into his arms so they can kiss while Zhenya jerks himself off with the remainder of Sid’s release.

Slowly, like he’s testing it out, Sid draws Zhenya’s arm from his shoulder and pins it to the bed. Zhenya’s breath hitches in his throat and Sid squeezes a little tighter and Zhenya comes to the thought of Sid using the full range of his strength and weight to his advantage in bed together.

“Sorry,” Sid says, looking a little sheepish as he lets go of Zhenya's wrist and eases back onto his heels.

Zhenya flexes his fingers. “It’s okay, it’s good. I liked it,” he says, cheeks hot as he tries not to think too hard about how Sid pinning him down made his body light up.

Zhenya wipes his stomach off with his shirt and tosses it onto the floor. Sid follows his lead, and Zhenya gets his first clear view of the line of his torso, his smooth skin and broad shoulders and the freckles that are flecked there. Zhenya has to close his eyes to hold back the many things that well up inside him. He’s never wanted anything so acutely in his life.

Sid crawls back under the covers and kisses both of Zhenya’s eyelids gingerly before lying down. “I think I’ll sleep very well now.”

Beyond the window, the world seems brighter to Zhenya the next morning. The fire has been restocked and Zhenya flushes to think that the housekeeper saw them in bed together like that. He has to get used to it if he hopes for it to be a regular occurrence, which he does.

Sid borrows some of Zhenya’s clothes, which don’t fit him very well, and circles Zhenya’s study, inspecting things. Zhenya lets him be. It must all look so different from this new vantage point.

Sid’s admiring a model globe when the housekeeper pokes her head in the door. She gives a wary glance to Sid, who smiles at her, which is really the best concord Zhenya could hope for.

“We’ll have breakfast together, here,” Zhenya says, and shares a private smile with Sid.

There are now _two_ chairs in front of the fireplace in Zhenya’s study. He and Sid eat at least one meal there together every day and they adopt a cat because Zhenya has grown too accustomed to having something to sit in his lap and read too.

_(...Sid could probably still do that, but you know what I mean...)_

They live happily ever after together in their gothic mansion, the end.


End file.
